Jesus Christ, it’s late. Another night. The TV, just… blaring. My wife, bless her soul, always said I’d turn into one of those old farts who just stares at the telly, and here I am. She’s been gone five years now. Silent house. That’s the real kicker, the silence. You get used to the noise, you know? Her humming, the clatter of her baking, the goddamn soaps she watched. Now it’s just the hum of the fridge and the news anchors shouting about… well, it doesn’t even matter what they’re shouting about. I don't know why this particular memory popped up tonight, but it did. It’s been bothering me. This whole thing with Alice, my first wife. Not Marie, my second. Alice. We were together, what, twenty-five years? Met her in high school. Thought that was it, forever, the whole fucking fairy tale. Then, mid-fifties, BAM. It was like a goddamn lightning strike. “I need more, Arthur,” she said. “I feel… unfulfilled.” Unfulfilled. That was the word. She’d read it in some psychology book, I swear. She was always reading those self-help things, trying to figure out… what, exactly? Herself, I guess. Ourselves. We went to this couples’ counselor, Dr. Evans, very distinguished, a real head-shrinker type. He’d just sit there, stroking his chin, asking us to "explore our unmet emotional needs." Jesus. I just wanted to fix the leaky faucet, metaphorically speaking, but she wanted to rebuild the whole goddamn house from the foundation up. The friends… that was the worst part, wasn't it? After the divorce, after she moved out. They just… vanished. Or they picked sides. Like a schoolyard spat, only with mortgages and adult children involved. Bill and Sarah, who we’d had dinner with every single Friday for twenty years, every damn Friday without fail. Sarah just stopped calling. Bill, he’d give me these pitying looks when I’d bump into him at the hardware store. “How are you holding up, Art?” he’d say, like I was a goddamn invalid. I’m a plumber, for Christ’s sake. I fix things. I’m not some delicate flower. But it stung, it really did. Rebuilding from scratch at 50, trying to find new people, new places to go. It felt like I was developmentally delayed or something, trying to learn how to socialize all over again. And the loneliness, Christ. The sheer, relentless loneliness that just… sticks. It’s like a dull ache in your bones. Even with Marie, my second wife, God rest her soul, there was always this little pocket of solitude I couldn't quite fill. She was lovely, a good woman, but Alice… she was the beginning, you know? The blueprint. And when that blueprint got torn up, it left a permanent hole. Not like a bad hole, not exactly. More like… a missing limb. You can still feel it sometimes, even though it’s not there. Phantom limb pain, that’s what it is. That’s the precise diagnostic terminology for it, I guess. And tonight, it’s just throbbing. Every single minute. Every single minute.